The Discovery of Halley-sized Kuiper Belt Objects Using the Hubble Space Telescope
- 1 December 1995
- journal article
- Published by American Astronomical Society in The Astrophysical Journal
- Vol. 455, 342
- https://doi.org/10.1086/176581
Abstract
We report the statistical detection (at the >99% confidence level) of a population of 28th magnitude objects exhibiting proper motions of ~1 arcsecond per hour at quadrature in deep HST/WFPC2 images. The drift directions imply a preponderance of objects on prograde orbits concentrated near the ecliptic plane. We interpret this as the detection of objects which reside in the Kuiper belt near or beyond the orbit of Neptune, comparable in size to comet 1P/Halley (radii ~10 km for an albedo of 4%). Our observations imply a population of ~2.5x10^4 objects deg^-2 with V2x10^8 objects of this size in the Kuiper belt with inclinations <12 degrees and within ~40 AU of the Sun.Keywords
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